Unless, that is, they do what FlashForward did last night, something that immediately warranted a second blog post on it.

Y’see, in the preceding episodes, the main character (that would be Mark Benford, played by Joseph Fiennes), was using a Blackberry Storm, as I said in the first blog post I did about FlashForward. Last night, though, he wasn’t. He was using something new. In fact, all of the FBI agents were using new phones, and from the picture over there to the right, I’m sure you can guess what phone they were using.

Yup, they’ve all, now, got the Palm Pre.

What, did the FBI all upgrade their contracts, and not tell anyone? Some of us (well, alright, probably just me) notice these things, you know! Is it a case of, I suspect, Palm going to ABC and saying, “Please put us in there, we’ll pay you”?

Now, me being the naturally sneaky git that I am, I reckon one could use the global blackout to get yourself new phones. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? Mark Benford is building up a bulletin board of info, based on the bulletin board he saw in his flashforward, right, so his actions are being led by what he saw in the future.

Are you telling me that if you were after a new phone, you wouldn’t say, “Oh, and by the way, we were all using Palm Pre’s, go buy us some, thanks”? I know I would!

Anyway, plot update: people are still coming to terms with what happened, and try to figure out what caused it, and if it was deliberate (which it’s increasingly looking to be), why whoever did it actually did it. Oh, and a cubic buttload of crows died. And there was another, short range blackout event in Somalia in 1991. With what suspiciously looked like a huge, primitive mobile phone mast…

Ooh, are they going to tie mobile phones into the actual event itself, instead of just using them for product placement?

I’m super intrigued now…

Have you worked out WHO and WHAT caused the black out, and more importantly, WHY? Good, ‘cos I haven’t. Leave us a comment and have your say!

1/ I got the new game, Brutal Legend, today, which technically has a mobile phone in the opening cutscene (hence allowing me to talk about it here).

2/ Brutal Legend is made of pure, distilled metal awesomeness.

Oh, ok, make that three reasons, ‘cos the third one is this: heavy metal owns my soul…

Right, let’s get the mobile phone part of this blog post out of the way, because, as I warned you earlier, the link’s gonna be a bit tenuous at best. Y’see, as I also said earlier, there’s a mobile phone in it. During the opening cutscene. However, I strongly suspect it is in no way, shape or form, a real mobile phone. It looks a tiny bit like a Sidekick Slide (albeit painted white). Y’know, the ol’ side-sliding QWERTY type thingy, similar in design to how the upcoming Sony Ericsson X2, or the already available HTC Touch Pro2, work.

But anyway, that’s enough of that, ‘cos mobile phones ain’t what Brutal Legend is all about. Nope, this game is all about one thing, which is coincidentally, the only truly accurate word to describe it: metal. When the lead character is a roadie, played by Jack Black, and carries both an axe (as in a guitar) and an axe (as in a real axe), and when the game has voices by Lemmy Kilmister (of Motorhead), Rob Halford (of Judas Priest), Lita Ford (of The Runaways) and the bleedin’ Prince of Darkness, Ozzy himself, you can be fairly certain of the fact it’ll rock.

Of course, the fact that the first action sequence of the game has Sabbath’s Children of the Grave as its theme tune is a bit of a giveaway, too.

Everything about the game is awesome. The script is hilarious, the action’s violent, and the world Tim Schafer has created is just beyond belief. And it’s really hard to describe it in one sentence, but essentially, think this: imagine the world of Middle Earth, as described by JRR Tolkien, if Tolkien had been listening to Slayer and Sabbath at the time.

Or to put it another way, it’s like playing inside every metal album, with a landscape made of every album cover. ever.

And it. Is. Awesome. Time to hop in the druid plow (yep, your hot rod in the game), switch the in-game radio to Judas Priest, and go laminate some evil demons into the asphalt…

Is your soul owned by the gods of metal? And can you actually identify what the phone in the first cutscene’s supposed to be? Leave us a comment and have your say!

Let’s not forget that Armando Iannucci was also co-creator of the phenomenon that was Alan Partridge, and that incredibly biting political satire, The Thick Of It.

And that’s where the movie In The Loop comes in, being, as it is, a spin-off from that political satire. Or, as another way of putting it (for those who know exactly what this sentence means, and why it’s a good thing), the continuing adventures of Malcolm Tucker. Y’know, Malcolm Tucker, the new most magnificent man on TV. Malcolm Tucker, the man who can make swearing sound poetic.

I’ll get onto the plot and the politics bit in a minute (and of course, the mobile phones seen in the film), but for now, I just want to take a moment to appreciate the genius of Malcolm Tucker. Alas, I can’t actually show you the genius of Malcolm Tucker, because you’ll be doing well to find a clip that’s not of him pouring out a tirade of incredibly well written, charismatic abuse (with added swearing).

Basically, he’s a god amongst other TV characters, despite not being a particularly pleasant human being. And you have to split the credit for that character between two distinct entities, really. The first is the writers, obviously. But the second is the ever so awesome Peter Capaldi, the man who I still think should get the Best Actor BAFTA for his performance in Children Of Earth. I’m gonna try not to go on about Peter Capaldi too much here, lest it develop into a full-blown man-crush, but suffice to say, his acting style is incredibly subtle, and he captures tiny nuances of every character he plays. Even ones who spend approximately 252% of their onscreen time verbally tearing someone a new one.

The plot centres around the Minister for International Development, Simon Foster (played with perfect comic timing by Tom Hollander), accidentally saying that a war in the Middle East is ‘unforeseeable’. From that one little mistake comes the whole plot, as various political sides in both Britain and America try to make Foster their meat puppet, to either go to war, or not go to war.

And here we come back to Iannucci, who says his whole idea with In The Loop was to show Washington as being rubbish. We’ve seen it as evil in oh so many things, we’ve seen it as being noble in things like The West Wing… Now it’s time to see it being rubbish, staffed by people who muck things up, and who are fallible and, frankly, a bit useless.

There’s a name for people like that.

It’s ‘normal human being’.

And so, the plot evolves and winds on, and we get a couple of hours of biting political satire, stuff funny enough to actually hurt you (my ribs ached after watching the film) and incredibly strong characterisation. And, for film nerds like me, some brilliant, brilliant choices for who played what roles. Yes, I know, everyone’s going to mention Paul Gandolfini, Tony Soprano himself, as General Miller. Yes, that’s fine, he was cool.

But, no, I mean someone else. I mean Assistant Secretary of State (Policy) Linton Barwick. Played by David Rasche. Sledge bleedin’ Hammer himself! Good god, I used to love that TV show when I was growing up. Oh, and let’s not forget that he, along with Peter Capaldi, gave me the biggest laugh of the film. I can’t repeat what it was that made me laugh. No, genuinely, I can’t repeat it. Anyone who’s seen it knows the bit I mean. F, star, star, and then the word I’m not allowed to say under any circumstances.

I nearly fell out my chair laughing.

Now, as for mobile phones, given that it’s designed to be as realistic as possible, whilst still being funny, expect to see lots of phones in the fillum. I counted loads, although most of ‘em were only onscreen for split seconds at a time, so identifying ‘em was hard. However, I know for a fact I saw a Nokia N95 8Gb, a Nokia N96, a Blackberry Pearl, a Samsung G800 (and they even got a joke about the number of megapixels in the camera in there… I was impressed) and what I’m almost positive was a Nokia E61 (used by Jamie MacDonald, the crossest man in Scotland). And this is how clever the film was, I get the distinct impression they specifically tailored what phones each character would have, based on what actual phones people would have in those roles (like every American delegate having a Blackberry, which they so would). It also makes sense that they wouldn’t have the absolute best phones on the market (quite apart from the fact the film came out before phones like the Palm Pre, for example, hit the market), just something that’s, as the old saying goes, close enough for government work.

So, in conclusion, watch The Thick Of It, first. Then watch In The Loop. Then, since it’s one of the most influential sitcoms ever, and the clear spiritual ancestor of those two, watch Yes Minister.

Then imagine the wonder that would be Malcolm Tucker and Sir Humphrey Appleby going toe to toe.

Good god, that’d be awesome. Yet another reason why it’s such a tragedy that Nigel Hawthorne, one of the best actors EVER, is no longer with us…

Are you a fan of Malcolm Tucker? Leave us a comment and have your say (but for the love of god, don’t quote him, or my * key will get worn out from having to make it safe for family viewing)!

Even if I’d watched it with very high expectations, FlashForward would still’ve blown my mind.

It. Was. Awesome.

And best of all, for the purposes of this blog, it actually had some relatively modern mobile phones in it! Well, alright, let’s not go overboard, a relatively modern phone.

Well, alright, a Blackberry Storm. Considering the cack phones that normally get seen on TV, or in films, that’s a massive step up, that is. Oh, and there was a Samsung F700 as well, which is, as one of Samsung’s earliest touchscreen phones, a precursor to modern monster like the Samsung Pixon 12.

Ah, but what of the plot?

Well, here’s the mindbending bit. The story begins on a day like any other day, with people going about their business, and FBI agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes proving he can be as large a ham as his brother…) in hot pursuit of a rather attractive blonde woman, and a terrorist (oh, and his partner is the MILF Guy out American Pie… or Sulu out the new Star Trek, if you want a more nerdish reference). And then everyone in the world blacks out, for 2 minutes 17 seconds. Billions of people, all switched off like lightbulbs.

And then, when they wake up, you get the kind of chaos you’d expect from 6 billion people suddenly falling asleep, especially if they’re behind the steering wheel. Roads are jammed by thousands, millions, of fatal accidents. People lay dead where they fell face down in a puddle. Planes on take-off or landing have dropped out of the sky, ploughing through nearby houses. Helicopters have flown into buildings, setting the L.A. skyline ablaze. Millions of people, round the world: dead in the space of two minutes.

Oh, and bizarrely, there’s a kangaroo hopping around in downtown L.A.

Oh, but people didn’t just black out. They saw the future. For those two minutes, their perception was six months in the future, living memories of events yet to happen. Cue the ongoing plot: figure out what caused the global blackout, and figure out why April 29th, 2010, is so important…

Oh, and cue lots of people watching in awed silence, then getting hit with a HUGE cliffhanger. And then, cue lots of wild mass guessing on what the hell is going on.

It was masterful. Not for a long time have I seen a TV show that got me thinking and discussing possible theories with so many people. This is what we need more of on telly, intelligent, well-made sci-fi. And I don’t care that the writers and producers say it’s not sci-fi. Unless their explanation of the event is “God, or possibly a wizard, did it”, then it has to have some kind of scientific explanation. And since it’ll then be fiction that involves science (and ten quid says it invokes quantum, and predestination paradoxes/stable time loops are a shoe-in to get mentioned, too), it’ll be science fiction.

Now, in the original novel the TVshow’s based on, the whole thing was caused by the large hadron collider being turned on, and some kind of cosmic accident. Since it looks like the event on the telly was something done deliberately (watch the episode on Demand Five, and pay attention not just at the Detroit Stadium scene, but at the two Chinook helicopters… you’ll see what I mean), I reckon we can rule out the LHC.

So, the question remains, what the hell is going on? Well, in truth, I do not yet have a clue. But I know one thing. The next 13 weeks, as we find out, are going to be awesome…

What’s your theory on FlashForward? LHC, aliens or a wizard did it? Leave us a comment and have your say!

According to IntoMobile, the Palm Pre is going to be, in some way, involved in the remake of The Prisoner. To which I reply: “What the hell?! They’ve remade The Prisoner?! How could I not know about that?!”

For many who’s not old or geeky enough to remember The Prisoner (and you really have no excuse, ‘cos BBC4 rerun it fairly regularly), it’s a cult TV show about the exploits of a government agent spirited away from his London flat, who wakes up as a prisoner called ‘Number 6′, in a bizarre seaside location known as The Village. It’s a cult classic for many reasons:

1/ The sadly-missed Patrick McGoohan was in it, and he was one of the greatest actors of his generation.

2/ It was filmed in the Italianate village of Portmeirion, in North Wales, thus making it instantly recognisable.

3/ It mixed elements of spy fiction, psychological theory, 60s counterculture, and had a deep-running individualism vs collectivism theme, with overtones of constant surveillance, a la George Orwell.

4/ Rover. Yes, the big monstery thing in it is a giant, white beachball.

5/ The ending. You know the one I mean. If you’ve seen it, you never forget it.

A cult classic, it is, and one that I watch every time it’s on telly. So, as you can imagine, the thought of a remake fills me with a certain amount of dread. For one thing, it’s gone all American, because as we all know, nothing interesting happens outside of America. And the other thing? No more Welsh village. Portmeirion is no longer the home of The Prisoner. They’ve moved it from that iconic Welsh locale to, er, Namibia. And made it look like 50s America. Because, as I say, no-one in the world is interested in anything that’s not American, right?

The worst bit, though, the absolute worst bit, is that the whole thing seems so serious, so bleedin’ deadpan. It’s lost all the playfulness, the weird exuberance, the sheer joie de vivre the original had. And being American, they have to turn things up to 11, and I reckon I can sum up that attitude, and what I think of (what I’ve seen of) the remake so far:

Bigger balls…

Seriously, Rover’s gone all massive! What happened to the slightly rubbish beach ball monster we all know and love? Has someone slipped it a bicycle pump when no-one was looking?

But anyway, the Palm Pre. I have no idea if it will actually be in the TV show, but it’s in the accompanying webcomic. Well, it would be, since the webcomic’s sponsored by, you guessed it, the Palm Pre.

But I’ll leave you with the promo footage that was shown at this year’s Comic-Con:

I’ll concede only this: if I had never actually seen The Prisoner (the proper one), this would look pretty damn cool, and it’s got Ian McKellen in, and everything.

As I am a massive fan of The Prisoner (the proper one), it just feels a bit, well, wrong…

Are you excited about The Prisoner remake? Or as gutted and depressed as Technical Markus? Leave us a comment and have your say!

I’ve had a bit of stick, recently, since I went to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, despite thinking the first film was rubbish; however, I’m a fair and equitable soul, who likes to give every film a chance (quite apart from the fact I’m a Transformers fan of some 25 years, and so, had to go see a TF film, even if I suspected it would be bobbins). After all, I couldn’t stand the first Resident Evil film, but actually quite liked the sequel, RE: Apocalypse.

Besides which, my mate was paying, so it wasn’t costing me anything, even if it was garbage.

So, I wandered over to see it, since, as well as the above, the trailer had some wide shots in, which suggested Michael Bay may possibly have listened to the complaints people had about the first film. And to be fair, there were some wide shots in it.

Alas, there was also a fundamental lack of any real plot direction, virtually no character development whatsoever, and oh so many flaws. But fortunately, it had phones in it, so I can legitimately talk about it here. Specifically, it had LG phones in it. Obviously it wasn’t something as high-end as the LG Viewty Smart, because 1/ the film was shot last year, and 2/ it’s American. I suspect it was an LG Versa, since that’s the phone LG are now selling in a limited-edition, Transformers-decorated way.

As for the film itself, though… dear god, it was awful. Like, properly, woefully bad. And that’s a real shame, because in amongst the ocean of tepid hideousness, there were one or two dead good concepts struggling to get themselves seen. Like the Decepticons threatening humanity with annihilation, unless they handed over Sleepy LaBeef’s character. That could’ve been such a good plot device, and let us see humanity at its darkest. Or the character of Jetfire, he was actually quite well done. Or the central plot conceit of Sleepy LaBeef holding the Autobot Matrix of Leadership in his head (which they nicked from the Marvel G1 comic, and hence, was something that made me do a little fanboy-smile).

But, no. Instead of a genuinely gripping, entertaining plot, we get nearly two and half hours of a robot doing something to Megan Fox’s leg (yes, think small dogs), Devastator with giant, pendulous… erm, things, made out of two wrecking balls, and a robot in disguise as a human, who has a tentacle where you really wouldn’t expect to see one.

Not to mention Michael Bay now seemingly having an obsession with tentacles. They should’ve called it Transformers: Hentaipocalypse, and had done with it…

Every reviewer who’s said the film is just like hitting yourself repeatedly with a hammer, while really staring at the inner cogs and motors of a Hoover is bang on, I’m afraid. I never thought I’d see the day when a movie that’s essentially nothing but wall-to-wall action is dull. Congratulations, Bay, you’ve somehow, magically made action boring. Oh, and a bit of extra criticism, if your title character is the bot known only as The Fallen, then don’t have The Fallen onscreen for only 3 scenes, with a combined running time of about 15 minutes. And I’d like to ask that people please, for the love of god, stop asking why a film needs to have a plot. Because it’s a film, that’s why; if it hasn’t got one, it’s just a collection of badly edited stock footage.

However, I will congratulate ILM once again, because despite being given cack designs to work with, and a director who seemingly doesn’t know how to frame a shot, you did a spot-on job with the special effects, yet again.

It’s just a shame that special effects alone don’t make a movie. You need heart and soul, and Revenge of the Fallen has neither…

Did you actually like Revenge of the Fallen? Or did you think it was a complete pile of steaming garbage? Leave us a comment and have your say!

I’m guessing quite a lot.

Created by two of the team behind The League, Psychoville is… well, it’s gloriously twisted. Anyone who was a fan of The League will be right at home, here, as it’s packed to the brim with some of the most grotesque characters ever to grace our screens. Oh, and yes, I spotted a mobile phone in it last night, so I’m free to blog about it with impunity, something I’ve been gagging to do since I saw the first episode, last week.

I’ll get the phones out the way first, before I delve deeper into the wonder that is Psychoville. And the phone I saw last night was a Motorola V8. So, hardly worth talking about, then (although the preview for next week’s shows Janet McTeer using a touchscreeny type phone that I’m having no joy in identifying. So check it on iPlayer, and leave us a comment with what you think it is).

Right, that’s the phones out the way, on to the glory of Psychoville itself…

Oh dear god, how can I describe it? Well, basically, the plot centres around a bunch of disparate and equally disturbing characters spread out all over the country (as opposed to the insular community of Royston Vasey, which is for locals only, as we all know), who all have something in common. They’ve all been sent a note by a hooded, anonymous blackmailer, that simply says “I know what you did”. There’s Mr Jelly, a scary, one-handed clown. There’s Oscar Lomax, a blind man obsessed with his “commodities” (which, in a stroke of genius, are Beanie Babies). There’s the serial killer-obsessed mother-and-son double act of David and Maureen Sowerbutts. There’s Robert, the dwarf with psychokinetic powers. And finally, there’s what may be the most beautifully twisted comic creation I’ve ever seen: Joy the midwife (played with beautiful malice and insanity by Dawn French, who’s back in her Murder Most Horrid mode), who clearly believes her Freddy Fruitcake doll is a real, living baby, and who feeds him blood from the blood bank in his bottle.

I never thought I’d see a group of characters to rival Edward and Tubbs, Herr Lipp and the terrifying charisma of Papa Lazarou, but by god, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton have done good. Really good. Seriously, this is most likely the one chance I’ll get, so if Pemberton or Shearsmith are reading this blog (I can dream), then I want to thank you both personally for making one of the best comedy thrillers I’ve ever seen.

And thank you for not using a laughter track. I really like the fact that with some of the bits, one is not sure whether they should be laughing or not, because it’s just so wrong, and yet, one laughs anyway.

If you haven’t yet seen Psychoville, I have but one piece of advice: get the first two episodes watched on iPlayer, and then do not miss any subsequent episodes. Trust me. And as a final treat… part of the viral marketing/alternate reality game around Psychoville, direct from Youtube, with possibly the best cameraphone-based joke I’ve ever seen…

Are you a Psychoville fan? Have you tried out the online Psychoville experience? Leave us a comment and have your say!

What I have seen, though, is an advert for something called Dualize, which I suspect isn’t a real product in the slightest, and this is the bit that’s annoyed me even more.

There’s a phone on those fake billboards.

And I can’t work out exactly what phone it reminds me of.

That is annoying…

It looks a bit like it’s based on a Nokia (but one of their early slidy ones, not something like the Nokia N97), but I have a radical theory. The banner is for something called Dualize (and I wish I could’ve screenshotted it), which, if you stretch your imagination a bit, could be a reference to the network Three. And then it hit me, where I reckon I’ve seen the design before. It’s almost a dead ringer for the INQ1 Facebook phone that they sell, with a bit of Nokia glued on around the nav-keys.

However, for anyone who’s played Prototype (yes, I know it wasn’t supposed to be out till today, but the place I bought it from sent my copy early)… if you can pinpoint what you reckon the phone in the Dualize banner’s based on, then leave us a comment.

Now, on to the game itself. It’s had a smattering of reviews, and some of them have been a bit mediocre. Yes, I can see why reviewers are saying the graphics aren’t up to speed, because some of the textures are a bit drab and lifeless. But that’s not the point. The point of Prototype isn’t to be relentlessly pretty, the point is to let you brutally mangle everything that you come up against. Set in the middle of some kind of massive zombie flu outbreak on Manhattan island, you play Alex Mercer, a man who’s lost his memory but somehow gained shapeshifting abilities, the ability to turn yourself in lots of pointy or bludgeony weapons, and generally eat everyone around you.

The point, then, isn’t about having super-slick, top-end graphics, it’s about mincing everyone around you, military, zombie, mutant and innocent bystander alike, into tiny, itty, bitty chunks. Oh, and punching tanks to death. If ever there was a game destined to have an 18 rating it’s this’n…

And it rocks, most assuredly. The only downside? It’s made finding a picture of it for this blog post (i.e. one without lots of graphic violence) really hard to find…

It’s just a shame there’s no real phone advertising in there. Especially on PS3. That would’ve been a great way to push the new Sony Ericsson Aino, ‘cos, like, you can use that phone to control your PS3.

Imagine watching footage from Prototype on your Aino, where the character is looking at something on his Aino.

That’s enough post-modernism to break anyone’s brain…

[EDIT: Damn. I should've played through more of the game before I wrote this post, since there is a real phone in it, handled by Alex Mercer himself, and when he slings it towards the camera in disgust, you can clearly see it's supposed to be a Nokia 6120. So, turns out Nokia maybe did get a bit of actual product placement in there! Of course, Sony may get a bit peeved seeing a Nokia phone in a game on their system, but that's their own fault, they should've got Sony Ericsson in there quicker.]

Can you pinpoint exactly what the phone adverts in Prototype are based on? Leave us a comment and have your say!

Well, I finally caved in, and went to see it.

And…

Bleedin’ nora, it was awesome! Honestly, I expected it to be bad, bordering on chuffin’ awful (since it was written by the two writers responsible for the godawful script in Transformers), but I was in for a somewhat hefty surprise. It’s genuinely well written, the acting’s superb, ScottyPegg rocks, and the plot is about as massive as it gets. I’m not going to spoil it by saying what happens, but thanks to this movie, everything about Star Trek has changed. I’ll simply use the words alternate universe, and we’ll leave it at that.

However, this is a phone blog, so there needs to be something related to phones in all of this… and there is!

Y’see, in one of the early scenes, we see a young Kirk barrelling along in a really rather nice ‘67 Corvette Stingray. Niiiiiiice car. And then, out of the blue, we hear a noise. And it’s a familiar one.

It’s that ol’ Nokia ringtone, only it’s been all futurised and done with proper synthesizers and whatnot. S’like Nokia would sound if Jean Michel Jarre was their producer. Yup, Baby James T. Kirk has got a future Nokia embedded in the dashboard of his Corvette. We get to see what Nokia phones might very well look like when man has boldly gone where no-one should’ve really gone, thinking about it, because we’ve now upset the Ferengi or something.

Of course, the phone in the film is a touchscreen, and one is forced to wonder whether that’s what the Nokia N97 has in its future. After all, as aliens all round the galaxy can attest, you haven’t lived till you’ve been manhandled by Captain Kirk…

Have you seen Star Trek? Did you love it as much as Techy Markus? Did you think Scotty’s little alien pal rocked? Leave us a comment and have your say!

Oh, and yes, it’s got mobile phones in it.

Well, come on, in a series that’s all about becoming disconnected and alienated by the world around you, a boring job, and the various ways the world can make you crack up in spectacular style (including having onscreen fantasies about snapping your boss’s neck), mobile phones are going to get a mention. Because not everyone loves them as much as me, let’s be honest.

And so, Reggie (played by Martin Clunes) gets an LG Viewty. Reasonably decent phone at what it does, showing its age in the modern world of mobile phones. So, was it chosen because of that, to make it a proper counterpoint to Reggie, a man whom the exact same things could be said of?

Or was it because someone on the production team likes ‘em?

Either way, it ends up making sense. I can’t see someone like the character they’ve crafted in Reggie Perrin using something like an HTC Magic, no matter how hard I try.

Although it would’ve been nice if they stuck a sneaky reference to Nokia in, when they did the episode set in Finland that had ‘globalisation’ as a theme. Us mobile phone types could have guffawed for ages, then.

So, what of Reggie Perrin the series, then? Well, a weird thing’s happened. Watching it objectively, it’s not actually that laugh-out-loud-and-wet-yourself-giggling funny… and yet, I really like it. I tune in religiously to watch it every week, and in all honesty, for the life of me, I can’t work out why I like it. Maybe it’s the pretty harsh lens it casts modern life through. Maybe it’s the fact that Martin Clunes plays downcast and fed up better than anyone else I can think of. Maybe it’s the fact it’s got personality coming out of its ears, despite not, objectively, being that hilarious. Maybe it’s because I can just feel them building up to the same fake suicide ending the original series had, which was genuinely poignant.

Or maybe it’s because it’s got Lucy Liemann in it, who knows…

In conclusion, I have absolutely no clue why I like it so much. But I do. So there.

Do you love Reggie Perrin, despite not quite knowing why? Or do you think it’s a stain on the memory of the original? Leave us a comment and have your say!